It is common for a medicament supplied in tablet form to be packaged in a blister pack. Such a pack typically comprises an upper sheet of a semi rigid plastics material in which the blisters are formed, and a lower sheet of sealing foil which closes the blisters. In order to eject a tablet from a blister, the pack has to be held with the underside of the blister spaced from any supporting surface, and a collapsing force needs to be exerted on the blister. If such force is sufficiently large, it will cause the portion of the foil sealing the blister to rupture, thus releasing the tablet.
Although an able bodied person can easily release a blister from the pack without further assistance, a person of reduced manual dexterity can have difficulty exerting a sufficient collapsing force on a blister while holding the blister pack in the correct positions.
EP-A-0759403 shows a tablet dispenser having a tray for holding a blister pack and a lid in which a number of buttons, each connected through a respective plunger, are provided. Each plunger overlies respective blister so that, when the associated button is pushed, a tablet is ejected from that blister by the plunger. Since the number of buttons has to correspond to the number of blisters in a pack, the buttons are small and therefore difficult to use.
EP 0547426A shows a tray like container having a lid which is provided with a single plunger slidable along a race so that it can move into engagement with any selected one of the blisters in a pack held in the tray. However, the top of the plunger is still relatively small, and has to be moved manually into registry with each blister in turn, a characteristic which can make the device awkward to use if the user forgets or whether the plunger has been moved into registry with the next blister (after the last operation of the device).